| For nearly one hundred years, the Belgian Congo in Africa was the scene of intense European exploration, colonial exploitation by the Belgians, decimation of indigenous social and cultural mores, and a pawn in the international politics of the United States during the Cold War. Tales of the human atrocities committed under the reign of the Congo's colonial ruler, King Leopold II of Belgium, and the thwarted attempts fore economic nationalism and self-determination led by Patrice Lumumba have captured the imagination of two Western novelists, Polish-born writer Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness (1902) and American writer Barbara Kingsolver in The Poisonwood Bible (1998). This paper demonstrates the historical, literary and religious parallels between Kingsolver's work and the Conrad novel, as Kingsolver updated the story in the Congo from the earlier European colonial period to the more recent American dominated period. |
